Dee Gordon

It's not exactly the cavalry arriving, but right now any warm bodies can't hurt. The Dodgers have started calling up additional forces from the farm system, and with the Albuquerque Isotopes ' season now over, the parent club added some speed and utility Tuesday with shortstop Dee Gordon and infielder/outfielder Elian Herrera, and another long man in the bullpen in Stephen Fife . With Adam Kennedy and Kenley Jansen ...

CINCINNATI — Adrian Gonzalez waited almost a month to feel the way he did Sunday night. "Today is when I really started feeling my hands," Gonzalez said. "I've been doing a tweak every day, but today I finally felt something that worked and felt good. " What resulted was a pair of solo home runs in the Dodgers ' 5-3 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday. Gonzalez hadn't hit a home run since his first at-bat as a Dodger, on Aug. 26. He had been homerless in 25 consecutive games.

Matt Kemp was back. Clayton Kershaw was back. Heck, even Dee Gordon was back. Trouble was, the same struggling, mysteriously vacant Dodgers offense was also back. The Dodgers wasted another opportunity and lost another day on the calendar Tuesday, falling, 1-0, to the Diamondbacks at Chase Field on an unearned run. The loss dropped the Dodgers six games back of the Giants in the National League West , with just 20 games left to play. The ticking of their season's clock is becoming deafening to the Dodgers.

CINCINNATI -- Clayton Kershaw returned from a right hip injury to pitch five valiant innings and Adrian Gonzalez hit two home runs on Sunday night to help the Dodgers defeat the Cincinnati Reds , 5-3, at Great American Ball Park . The Dodgers remain three games back of the St. Louis Cardinals for the second of two National League wild-card playoff spots, but are faced with a new problem: Hanley Ramirez was forced to...

There's something I continue to have a difficult time understanding: Why is Hanley Ramirez playing shortstop? He's not particularly good there. It's not that he's completely awful, but for a fast guy he doesn't cover a lot of ground and his backhanded grabs have been less than average. He was better at third. And Luis Cruz is a better shortstop. So why make the switch, why didn't they leave Ramirez at third and Cruz at short? Particularly since, in theory, Don Mattingly said Dee Gordon will play shortstop when he comes off the disabled list.

Saturday comes that bizarre quirk to the major league season, where rosters can be expanded to include anyone active on the 40-man roster. Play all season with 25 guys, and the final month comes for the stretch drive, and suddenly it's a new game with expanded rosters. Manager Don Mattingly said the Dodgers would call up Tim Federowicz as a third catcher, and likely will bring back reliever Javy Guerra . More would follow later, as minor league teams finish their seasons next week.

Is a little sneak preview too much to ask? Because, honestly, this can't be it. The Dodgers offense has been struggling to produce all season, yet now with that new super middle of the order, it's actually gotten worse (3.3 runs per game with Adrian Gonzalez vs. 4.0 before). The Dodgers can't manufacture runs, and at the moment, can't play long ball, either. They are at the bottom of most every offensive statistic, unless you get excited about sacrifice hits. Yet despite being second in that category — just one back of Milwaukee!

In search of offense, a continuing story … Look at the Dodgers rotation and you probably figure that should be the team weakness. A bunch of .500-looking pitchers, currently minus ace Clayton Kershaw. But the Dodgers' rotation has a collective 3.54 ERA, third lowest in baseball. Lower than the Giants, Cardinals, Brewers and Phillies . They keep them in games. The problem has continued to be a horrifically disappointing offense. It is there where they continue to hover among the lower five teams in baseball in most every significant category: runs and RBI (26 th )

LOS ANGELES _ Throughout a dreadful defensive stretch in April, manager Bruce Bochy maintained that the San Francisco Giants would get better with their gloves. They haven't, and it continues to cost them. The Los Angeles Dodgers took advantage of a pair of key defensive mistakes to break open a close game and roll to a 9-1 victory at Dodger Stadium on Monday night. After the Giants tied the game in the top of the sixth inning, the Dodgers tacked on eight straight runs, many of which came after Giants mistakes.

You don't need to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University with a degree in economics to know the Dodgers needed a win Saturday. Chris Capuano has all of those things on his academic resum . If anything, his performance in the Dodgers' 3-1 victory over the Angels proved knowledge is not always power. "Sometimes you have those thoughts as a pitcher -- 'I want to stop this, I don't want to keep it going' -- but you have to rein in those thoughts," Capuano said.

In search of offense, a continuing story … Look at the Dodgers rotation and you probably figure that should be the team weakness. A bunch of .500-looking pitchers, currently minus ace Clayton Kershaw. But the Dodgers' rotation has a collective 3.54 ERA, third lowest in baseball. Lower than the Giants, Cardinals, Brewers and Phillies . They keep them in games. The problem has continued to be a horrifically disappointing offense. It is there where they continue to hover among the lower five teams in baseball in most every significant category: runs and RBI (26 th )

Moments like this have been so rare of late, you wondered if the Dodgers remembered how to pull it off. Certainly, things were looking less than promising Saturday night, down by a run, down to their last out in the bottom of the ninth inning, bases empty. Then some lost pixie dust was found. Andre Ethier singled, Dee Gordon ran for him and scored on a double by growing legend Luis Cruz just beyond the diving reach of center fielder Jon Jay and then the Dodgers won it when pinch-hitter Juan Rivera , an almost forgotten player the last month, lined a double off the glove of leaping second baseman Daniel Descalso to score pinch-runner Elian Herrera.

Come on, this was never supposed to happen. And then even when it did, it wasn't supposed to last. Luis Cruz was a nice little story. A good kid buried in the minors for 11 years, making stops in the Mexican League, close to walking away but finding the will to keep at it. Then he finally gets an unexpected chance when utility player Jerry Hairston Jr. is injured and lost for the year, and Cruz just takes off. That was so nice, though you...

The last time the Dodgers scored more than three runs in a game? Would you believe 11 days ago? For the third consecutive night, the Dodgers had a chance to tie the St. Louis Cardinals for the second and final wild-card spot in the National League . For the third consecutive night, the Dodgers failed. The Dodgers' offense failed, that is. In the opener of a four-game series that could severely wound their playoff hopes, the Dodgers suffered a 2-1 loss to the Cardinals on Thursday.

Not returning home, not the return of the Cool-A-Coo ice cream sandwich, not Dee Gordon trying (and failing) to steal his first base since July 4 and not the significance of the moment could change the Dodgers ' current course. They still could not score, still could not win, could not stop their frightening slide. They fell Thursday night to the one team they truly have to beat, falling, 2-1, to the St. Louis Cardinals before a Dodger Stadium crowd of 43,309 in the opener of a key four-game series.

PHOENIX — Adrian Gonzalez was again upset in the wake of the Dodgers ' latest defeat, a 3-2 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday night at Chase Field . His anger wasn't directed at himself, as it was the previous night, but at home plate umpire Dale Scott. With one out and the bases empty in the ninth inning, Gonzalez took a full-count fastball from Diamondbacks reliever David Hernandez for a called third strike. Television replays indicated the pitch was outside, as did the PITCH/fx pitch-tracking system.

This isn't just any road series for Dodgers outfielder Bobby Abreu , whose commute to the visiting park ( Angel Stadium ) this weekend is shorter than he's accustomed to driving to Dodger Stadium . Abreu has managed to put this out of his mind, like just about everything else when he reports to work. "To me, it's another team I'm playing," he said. "That's all. Another team we have to play. " Abreu says he has no hard feelings toward the Angels , who unceremoniously cut him in April after three years in Anaheim.

Time has made a strange habit of standing still at Dodger Stadium this season. Like when Andre Ethier belted a walk-off home run on his birthday, when Scott Van Slyke belted his first major-league home run to complete a comeback, or when Dee Gordon ended a game with a 10th-inning single. It happened again Thursday, when the Dodgers erupted for two runs in one inning. That's what amounts to heart-stopping moments these days, and the Dodgers' fourth-inning outburst against the New York Mets elicited a partial standing ovation from the announced crowd of 49,006.

Matt Kemp was back. Clayton Kershaw was back. Heck, even Dee Gordon was back. Trouble was, the same struggling, mysteriously vacant Dodgers offense was also back. The Dodgers wasted another opportunity and lost another day on the calendar Tuesday, falling, 1-0, to the Diamondbacks at Chase Field on an unearned run. The loss dropped the Dodgers six games back of the Giants in the National League West , with just 20 games left to play. The ticking of their season's clock is becoming deafening to the Dodgers.

PHOENIX — Dee Gordon will be used primarily as a pinch-runner this month, but Manager Don Mattingly said he still views the 24-year-old as the Dodgers ' shortstop of the future. "You know what? I'm not sure what everybody's thinking, but personally I think Dee's going to be a great player," Mattingly said. "He brings something that no one else can bring. " Such as speed on the basepaths and range at shortstop. Mattingly insisted he wasn't saying any of this to bolster the trade value of Gordon, who was one of three players called up from triple-A Albuquerque on Tuesday.